Brain Drain Essay ⋆ Business Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Brain drain is a popular term describing the international migration of highly skilled professionals. Transnational relocation of the highly skilled adheres to general migration patterns, but with some differences. Highly trained migrants are attracted to fast-growing economies from slow-growing economies, from low-wage to high-wage regions, and from political instability, risk, and restriction toward more stability, security, and freedom. Skilled migrants are also drawn toward flexible markets for professional jobs and toward fertile intellectual environments. Brain drains have increased in recent years thanks to the increasing importance of the “knowledge economy,” a slowdown or reversal of population growth and concomitant aging of populations around the world, and more mobile and less loyal workforces.

Originally a reference to the movement from post– World War II Europe to the United States in the 1950s and 1960s, “brain drain” has since been applied more widely to describe the phenomenon of trained professionals migrating internationally, but particularly from poorer to wealthier countries. Net recipients of a brain drain, such as the United States, are sometimes said to be experiencing a “brain gain.” Some countries having both sizable inflows and outflows, such as New Zealand (losing professionals to Australia but pulling them in from elsewhere in Asia), are regarded as experiencing a “brain exchange.” The “draining away” of scientists, computer programmers, nurses, and other such trained professionals is compensated by the knowledge transfers and monetary remittances those professionals send back to their places of origin. The value of such offsets varies across time and place, however. They have also been difficult to measure and difficult for policy makers to agree upon.

The global extent of the brain drain is unclear. Systems for tracking the movement of skilled professionals are incomplete and inconsistent. There are also uncertainties in defining the line between professional and nonprofessional workers, and in assessing the importance of factors, other than the demand for and supply of skilled workers, that also encourage their migration. There is, however, a general consensus on two points. First, the migration of professionals is disproportionately large relative to both the flows of international migrants generally and to the numbers of stay-at-home professionals. Second, this brain drain is likely to remain significant and grow larger in the future.

Information technology and healthcare are two industries most prominently reliant on international imports of trained professionals. India and the Philippines, among many others, are important suppliers of such workers. Leading destination countries include the United States, Canada, and Australia.

Demand for skilled professionals is rooted in growing global needs for “human capital.” In 2006 The Economist reported that 70 percent of the value of companies making up the United States’ “Standard & Poor’s 500” was comprised of “intangible assets,” much of which derived from technology and the talents of employees. A general ongoing shortage of scientists and engineers further increases their international movement toward places and companies where they are most wanted and best rewarded. The supply of highly skilled migrants also has powerful underpinnings. Compared to other migrants, professional workers are better able to recognize and pursue opportunities abroad, and public policies of recipient countries—and sometimes sending countries as well—have tended to favor skilled over unskilled immigrants.

The increasing globalization of higher education is connected to the brain drain in several ways. Many universities in developed nations now rely heavily on foreign students and teaching assistants who, in turn, often use that education abroad as a stepping stone to a job abroad. The brain drain also fosters the growth of education in developing countries whose citizens seek more advanced training at home as a ticket to a skilled job in a more-developed country. The total number of those obtaining higher education in the less-developed countries has been increasing, however, and some of them do not emigrate, thereby partially compensating developing countries for the skilled workers “drained” away.

Programs

The world’s largest official program of international importation of professional migrants is the system of H-1B visas in the United States, created by the Immigration Act of 1990. The number of such visas has been capped at 65,000 annually, although businesses calling for an increased quota succeeded in raising the ceiling to above 100,000 between 1999 and 2003. Foreign university students, often recruited by businesses, do not come under and are thus not limited by the cap of 65,000, however.

A “means test” is required before H-1B visas are approved for workers. Would-be employers have to “attest” that there are not a sufficient number of qualified American citizens to fill the job openings. This test has not proven to be a significant encumbrance, although there have been several controversial cases where the hiring of H-1B workers has been associated with an eventual layoff of local workers. Overall though, the program has been viewed favorably, has remained in effect with minor revisions over the years, and has been emulated by other developed countries. Regularized channels for migrating professionals limit, but do not eliminate, their extra-legal movement internationally.

Multinational corporations have also been active users of skilled migrants, despite a greater capability (than at smaller local firms) for shifting jobs between countries as well. Foreign direct investment is thus a substitute for brain drain but also opens up new channels for it, as workers generally can be moved across borders more easily if they are transferring between units of the same employer, rather than seeking a new job with a new employer abroad on their own. An increasing international diversity in the upper-management ranks of large companies reflects this globalization of talent.

Bibliography:

Showkat Ali et al., “Elite Scientists and the Global Brain Drain,” University of Warwick Economic Research Paper (n.825, 2007);
H-1B Work Visa Online Information Center, www.h1bvisa.org (cited March 2009);
“How to Plug Europe’s Brain Drain,” Time Europe (January 2004);
Phillip Martin, Manolo Abella, and Christiane Kuptsch, Managing Labor Migration in the Twenty-first Century (Yale University Press, 2006);
Babs Ryan, America’s Corporate Brain Drain: Why We Leave, Where We Go, How We Can Reverse the Flow (Sparks Worldwide, 2008);
“The Search for Talent,” The Economist (October 5, 2006).

This example Brain Drain Essay is published for educational and informational purposes only. If you need a custom essay or research paper on this topic please use our writing services. EssayEmpire.com offers reliable custom essay writing services that can help you to receive high grades and impress your professors with the quality of each essay or research paper you hand in.